Fox News - President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation's main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act. Provisions in the measure would have expired on Sunday without Obama's signature Saturday. The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government's ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security.

We await patiently to hear of leftist hypocrites crowing that Obama is shredding, shredding I tell you, the constitution. After all wasn't that what they said when Bush just wouldn't banish the Patriot Act and chose instead to keep the country safe, the bastard! Forgive me for not holding my breath, seeing that lefties are strangely silent as Obama authorizes drone after drone blowing terrorism suspects to pieces in the general Pakistan area. No trials, no lawyers, no rights, nothing, just kaboom!

So far no hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of every continent braying, Obama lied, thousands died, nothing about American imperialism, nothing about the oil companies profiteering, no stupid stunts of people in orange jumpsuits sitting in cages, nothing about the much-wailed-about 'international law' and the less equal(?) 'rule of law'.

Most readers here probably know Geert Wilders as the Dutch politician who dares to speak the truth about Islam. He is at the moment on trial in a Dutch court for doing just that -- but will probably be acquitted. A Dutch reader writes to tell me however that Wilders is also "The only firm anti-green in Western Europe".

A few days ago, however, the Dutch government fell, because of divisions between the coalition partners over Afghanistan -- which tends to discredit the parties involved. New elections will be held in June and Wilders is riding high in the polls. If his party gets more votes than any other, which seems possible, he would be in a very good position to become the next Prime Minister. Nederland has proportional representation so it is very unlikely that any party will get an outright majority in the Dutch parliament.

One can only dream but wouldn't it be good if a Dutch Prime Minister dismissed the global Warming hoax? Wilders is just the man to do so.

The political Left worldwide seems to regard everyone but themselves as responsible for high medical costs. The vast load of paperwork that they impose on healthcare providers and drug companies is costless, apparently. And the high incomes of some doctors frequently come under jealous scrutiny.

A high income group in Australia is ophthalmologists. Everyone wants the very best chance of preserving their vision so people are prepared to pay for a high level of care in eye-doctoring. And Australia's Federal Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, was determined to rein those rogue eye-doctors in.

As part of its socialized medicine system, the Australian government pays a large part of the cost of privately-contracted ophthalmological services, so Ms Roxon thought she had a good weapon to cut those rich eye-doctors down to size: She would halve the amount that her government pays for such services.

(Cartoon from TownHall.com)There was an incident - this is a "no-shitter" - where a commander in the field actually DID call back to a JAG (military lawyer) in order to get the okay for a mutha-fraggin' airstrike!

As lined-out by Uncle Jimbo at BlackFive.net,there IS a valid reason for the VERY restrictive ROE (rules of engagement), but when it comes down to the INTERPRETATION and IMPLEMENTATION of those rules, THAT is when we have a problem.

News.com.au - MORE than one NSW public school teacher a week is reported for sexual misconduct with students - ranging from inappropriate sexual comments to carrying on illicit affairs. Documents obtained by The Sunday Telegraph under Freedom of Information laws reveal 151 teachers were investigated by the NSW Department of Education's Child Protection Investigation Unit in the past two years.

Misconduct allegations were sustained in 26 cases, resulting in the sacking of 18 teachers, seven of whom were convicted of criminal charges in the courts. Another 40 teachers, just under a third of cases, were found to have breached some department rules but investigators determined they were not guilty of misconduct. More of the gory details at the source.

You know how the Christian-hating types always like to point the finger at and smear the whole church for molesting children, well it looks more and more like they've got some major kiddie-fiddling issues amongst their teaching buddies. It was never quite like this back when I was in school, and my gut feeling on this is that this unhealthy interest in children started on or after the take over of public education by leftists, marxists, closet-communists and anti-capitalism types. I don't know if anyone's done an actual study or done some research into this matter, but from my own anecdotal research, I've seen plenty of news articles of teachers trying to fiddle with their students and it's not getting any better. So be warned folks.

"Legal counsel Martin Bennett has a short message for those who allow themselves to attack reputations over the internet, imagining they are safe under the cloak of anonymity. "You can be hunted down and found," he said yesterday.

Mr Bennett has done just that for a Perth client, winning $30,000 in damages and costs, an apology, and undertakings from a Colac man that he won't post any more defamatory comments.

The hunt for the man's true identity proved the stuff of private detective novels updated into the age of blogs. The action against Graeme Gladman began after highly uncomplimentary comments appeared last November under pseudonyms on the HotCopper website, a stockmarket forum. The postings related to technology security company Datamotion Asia Pacific Ltd and its Perth-based chairman and managing director, Ronald Moir. One posting appeared under the pseudonym of "witch".

Datamotion and Mr Moir hired Mr Bennett to launch defamation proceedings. But first Mr Bennett had to track down "witch". He asked HotCopper to reveal the identity of the person registered under that pseudonym, plus two others under different pseudonyms, but HotCopper refused. Mr Bennett then took court action, forcing HotCopper to turn over its files. "Unfortunately, the registered membership name appeared to be false," he said. "It turned out to be attached to an escort service in Geelong."

But Mr Bennett was not prepared to concede the trail was cold. He told The Age he did not wish to reveal the details of his next detective steps, but the upshot was a defamation action against Mr Gladman alleging that, as a result of his postings, Datamotion and Mr Moir had been "brought into hatred, contempt and ridicule and thereby suffered damage".

It was resolved last week, with Mr Gladman agreeing to pay damages totalling $20,000, taxed legal costs of $10,000, and to provide apologies and undertakings not to publish further defamatory postings. Mr Bennett has launched two more cases. Both are pending before the WA Supreme Court.

Given Fraser's shaky attachment to the truth, one should ignore the claims below. He makes a great point of being "anti-racist" -- to the point of sucking up to African dictators. It is sad that he has no other claim on praise, given the many wasted opportunities for constructive reform he had whilst Prime Minister

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has blamed the immigration department for some policies such as remote detention centres that he believes may have racist motivations. He argues that white farmers fleeing Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe would not have been held in remote detention centres like more recent asylum seekers have been.

"The whole idea for establishing a detention centre in a remote, harsh place ... that sort of idea came out of the department," Mr Fraser told ABC Television on Tuesday. Asked if there was a racist culture within the department, he replied: "Maybe."

Mr Fraser added the Rudd government was "a little" better than the former coalition government when it came to the treatment of asylum seekers. He also challenged the coalition argument that Labor had lost control of Australia's borders. The former prime minister has given media interviews to promote his book, Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs by Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Simons.

My career as a social science researcher was not a difficult one. As a conservative, I had to write at a much higher standard than if I had been a common or garden variety Leftist but I could do that so 200+ of my articles got published in the academic journals.

One episode from the '90s, however, I still remember with displeasure. In the early '90s the editor of Sociology & Social Research was David Heer -- a sociologist who was basically interested in the facts of the matter rather than pushing an ideological wheelbarrow. He was located then and still seems to be at USC.

And I did at one stage submit a paper to him for publication in S. & S.R. which he accepted for publication. He seems however to have been too mild for the frantic Leftists in USC sociology and got pushed out of the journal editorship shortly thereafter.

And his successor at the journal -- Marcus Felson -- did something almost unheard of in academe: He "unaccepted" my paper. It was apparently too conservative for him, though he gave some other quite specious reason for rejecting it. He seemed to be a young man in a hurry so I appealed the matter to his Department Head at the time: Paul Bohannan. Bohannan was unmoved. So I appealed to the university President. But he was unmoved too.

The paper eventually appeared in another journal so Heer was vindicated and Felson was shown up as the nasty piece of work that he is. Without blowing the dust off some very old files (which makes me sneeze) I cannot remember for certain which paper it was but I am pretty sure that it is this one. I submitted the paper to S. & S.R. because it dealt with a matter originally raised in that journal.

I did write a scornful letter to Bohannan when the paper finally appeared in print. Felson I regarded as beneath contempt.

News.com.au - KEVIN Rudd has admitted his Government has "disappointed a lot of people" and let itself down by not living up to its promises or talking enough. In a candid interview with columnist Laurie Oakes, the Prime Minister admitted he had been too focused on policy details and had not spent enough time explaining his climate change scheme to voters. "We've disappointed a lot of people," he said. "We've let ourselves down."

Ah so you see folks, the only reason you dumb schmucks didn't run out and wildly support kevvie's great big tax on everything is simple, you were just too stupid to get it and your beloved kevvie just didn't have time to explain it more clearly to us. So I'm thinking our dear kevvie will draw some pictures, squeeze some squeaky toys and speak really s-l-o-w-l-y to help clear things up for us neanderthals in future. Gee thanks asshole!

On a side note isn't this what Obama's explanation was for his tanking-in-the-toilet ratings, that he didn't explain things clearly to the stupid American people, too caught up in the details! Bloody hell, this means our clown isn't even a bit original.

The debate over the bungled handling of the Federal Government's home insulation scheme "reflects a wider disappointment in the community about what the Government has done". Hours after the interview, he demoted Peter Garrett and announced a rethink in his Government's climate policy.

So the buck really doesn't stop with kevvie after all. Let me get this straight, his minister fucks up a couple of schemes, pisses away millions upon millions of our money, causes massive job losses in the industry, puts people out of business altogether, gets a lot of people killed in the process and as punishment is just demoted to a $200,000 plus a year job!

Wow, who said stupidity, callousness and incompetence doesn't pay, it seems to pay most handsomely in kevin rudds Australia.

Times Online - A leading Danish newspaper was today accused of betraying the freedom of the press after breaking ranks with its rivals to offer an apology to Muslims for publishing a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb-shaped turban. Politiken issued the apology after settling with a Saudi lawyer representing eight Muslim groups that complained after the cartoon was reprinted by 11 Danish papers in solidarity with the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who received death threats last year.

Many will be outraged and what not, the paper will weasel around saying that it's an apology for causing offense, that they're all for freedom of speech and all that crap, but ultimately more and more westerners will join the ranks of the dhimmi. You see the westerner no longer knows what freedom and liberty are, enough of us morons think that freedom to do stuff is brought about by lawyers and parliaments and all that crap.

They think that because some fancy piece of paper says that your soft, fat ass can say what you want to, that you can. The truth is that many of us are too dumb to understand that you only have the rights that you are prepared to and have the means to defend. See, even after all the death threats, muslim violence and what not, no one in Europe is prepared to consider legalizing the right to bear arms. No matter how many people are out to slit Kurt Westergaard's throat from ear to ear, they'll never let him take care of himself. He'll just have to deal with life as a coward and in hiding.

The study excerpted below is amusing. It is coming out in a sociology journal but concentrates on psychology to the exclusion of sociology! Amazing what can happen when you have an axe to grind!

The article is mostly speculation and theorizing but it does have some actual findings about IQ on which to build its house of cards. But the writer totally overlooks the social context in which the findings were gathered. They are not IQ findings from adults but rather findings about adolescents. The fact that data about adults were not presented is of course the giveaway.

The study found that the more intelligent adolescents were more liberal. So what does that prove? As someone who has taught both psychology and sociology at university level, I have little doubt what it means: It means that more intelligent kids are better at picking up and absorbing the lessons drummed into them by our Left-dominated educational system. It means no more than that. The sociological context overlooked is, in other words, the fact that the individuals concerned were still at school. I think that can reasonably be called: "Overlooking the obvious".

For the findings among random samples of adults, see here. Much more pesky!

UPDATE: I see that Time magazine has picked up on the study too. The "Time" article is surprisingly good and even points to evidence contradicting the headline claim. A small point, though: The author says that Leftists are more open to experience but the reference he gives for that shows nothing of the sort. The claim is however an old favourite of Leftist psychologists. My last look at the academic literature on the question is here. I conclude that, as psychologists usually define it, there is no political polarization on openness to experience. Leftists are however sensation-seekers. That might seem like a fine distinction but it is not if you look at how psychologists use the various terms concerned. The "openness to experience" claim is a way of saying that conservatives are rigid and narrow-minded whereas the sensation-seeking finding implies that Leftists like novelty for the sake of novelty.

I was listening to the Great Leader on the internet at his “bipartisan” summit on universal healthcare with the US Congress. If Obama thought he would embarrass the Republicans and shame them into submission, he was certainly disappointed. Instead his arrogance, ineptitude, and deceit were on display for all to see.

Obama began by lecturing the opposition on the need for health care. After all, he reads ten letters every night, that are hand selected by his staff from the approximately 40,000 that the White House receives each day, and there are usually two or three that talk about the need for healthcare. (Wow, what a surprise that his staff would find some letters that support his healthcare project. I wonder if he ever sees any of the letters from the opposition?) He also said that it was extremely important to get control of the huge national debt, which he says is substantially due to healthcare costs. And how does he propose to solve this dangerous deficit? By spending over a trillion dollars (probably closer 5 trillion) on his healthcare power grab. Don’t you just love leftist economics? If you have a debt problem just spend more borrowed money than you could possibly imagine and the debt disappears. 2 + 2 = 0. The government will take care of everyone and all it will cost is your liberty, your children’s future, and the destruction of the economy of the western world (when he takes out the US economy it will take everybody else with it as well).

Obama was clearly unprepared and upset when the Republicans failed to show up with white flags. He ended up trying to ridicule John McCain by telling him, in a very unfriendly tone, that he wasn’t on the presidential campaign trail any more, to which McCain replied that he was reminded of it every day (maybe he’s getting tired of Obama calling him everyday to brag). Obama also interrupted and scolded another Republican Representative, who was reading from the 2000+ page healthcare bill, for bringing a “prop” to the discussion. The “prop” was the healthcare bill. Apparently, Obama thinks that it is inappropriate to talk about what is in the bill at a summit on the bill because the “truth of the matter” is that it’s very complicated, and if you actually insist on discussing the bill nothing will get done. In other words, working together with Obama and the Democrats means shutting up, bending over and taking what the Great Leader has to offer. And as if to emphasize this point, the Democrats got twice as much time as the Republicans to present their view that universal healthcare is what everyone wants. This at a summit where they were supposed to listen to the Republicans.

The Democrats spent a significant amount of time denying that they intended to push the bill though using a parliamentary trick called “reconciliation” or the “nuclear option”, which is intended to avoid the need for 60 votes in the US Senate, even though they’ve spent the past several months saying they were going to do just that. All in all, it was a very embarrassing day for Obama. Does it mean that healthcare is dead? Probably not, but it was undeniable evidence that the left has no desire to work with the opposition and will instead continue their mad rush spend the US into oblivion. The worst is yet to come.

News.com.au - PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd says he is disappointed in himself for not paying closer attention to the rollout of the government's bungled home insulation program. Mr Rudd is also standing by embattled Environment Minister Peter Garrett, saying problems associated with the scheme were largely due to the failure of the compliance system that had been put in place. "I'm disappointed in myself for not asking more questions,'' Mr Rudd told ABC Television tonight. "In the pace of events last year, it's easy in hindsight to say we should have asked more questions but we didn't have time, but I accept responsibility for that.''

Dudd's version of taking full responsibility or as he'd like to say, the buck stops with me mate, fair suck of the sauce bottle mate, goes like this, say you're a married fellow. You go out and have an affair for months on end and when you eventually get caught, you decide to come clean. Look honey, I'm disappointed in myself for not stopping and thinking. It's easy in hindsight to say we should have stopped screwing around but we didn't have time, but I accept full responsibility for that. The buck stops with me. Now, what's for dinner, can you believe the latest on Tiger, pass the sauce bottle dear.

I heard dudd on talk-back radio this morning, fortunately I didn't hear all of it, but I did hear the tail end of it and also what people thought of him afterwards. I can see why kevvie avoids the highest rating radio station because from what I heard, more people seemed angrier with him after the interview than before.

I can't help noticing that the problem with runaway acceleration in Toyota cars affects drivers of automatic cars only. If my Toyota Echo started uncontrolled acceleration, I would just push in the clutch and move the gearshift into neutral: An entirely mechanical process under my complete control and the end of the problem. Another triumph for old-fashioned tried and true systems?

"Former Miss California Carrie Prejean isn't the only beauty queen open to expressing her objection to same-sex marriage. Miss Beverly Hills 2010 Lauren Ashley is also speaking out in support of traditional nuptials.

"The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman. In Leviticus it says, 'If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.' The Bible is pretty black and white," Ashley told Pop Tarts.

"I feel like God himself created mankind and he loves everyone, and he has the best for everyone. If he says that having sex with someone of your same gender is going to bring death upon you, that's a pretty stern warning, and he knows more than we do about life."

Ashley, 23, will be representing Beverly Hills in the Miss California pageant in November. Her statements mirror former Miss California Carrie Prejean's answer to a question about same-sex marriage in last year's Miss USA pageant. At the time, Prejean said her answer opposing same sex marriage cost her the title.

And according to the Miss California's state director, Keith Lewis, a contestant's personal opinion should have no bearing on the result. "The Miss California USA system has always had a place for an individual's thoughts and opinions when it comes to all sides of political issues," Lewis told Pop Tarts. "It is an organization which empowers women, and everyone is entitled to their own beliefs."

Which separates them from all their traditions as Presbyterians. They have fallen under the influence of a Satanic Leftist gospel rather than the true gospel. Needless to say, they have lost a huge slice of their membership over the years (estimated at nearly half in the last forty years) as there are many other Presbyterian denominations in the USA for faith-filled Christians to choose from. This latest act of hate will drive many more of their members away

The Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUSA) is about to release a report which denounces Israel as a “racist” nation which has absolutely no historical, covenantal, or theological right to the Holy Land. The report calls for the United States to withhold financial and military aid to Israel and for boycotts and sanctions against Israel. That’s not all. The report also endorses a Palestinian “right of return” and “apologizes to Palestinians for even conceding that Israel has a right to exist.” According to the press release, it also states that Israel’s history begins only with the Holocaust and that Israel is “a nation mistakenly created by Western powers at the expense of the Palestinian people to solve the ‘Jewish problem’.”

In addition, PCUSA has also resolved to divest in companies that supply military equipment to the American Army, e.g. Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, etc.

In 2004, this Church became the first mainline Protestant denomination in America to “approve a policy of divestment from Israel.” This was rescinded, but in 2008 the Church “created a committee dominated by seven activists holding strong anti-Israel beliefs. The lone member sympathetic to Israel, quit in protest when he saw their radical agenda.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center notes that 46 members of the US Congress and Senate are Presbyterians and fears potentially “significant repercussions in the political domain” as well as a negative “impact on interfaith relations.” They urge us all to protest directly to the top leadership of the PCUSA “to stop this dangerous campaign which denies the legitimacy and security of Israel,” and to “reach out to your Presbyterian friends.”

Amalek (the eternal enemy of the Jews) has arrived, right on time for the Purim festival. The war against the Jews is precisely what Purim is about. We read the classic indictment against the Jews for the first time in full in the haunting story of Esther. Haman, the Persian King’s advisor, tells him this: “There exists a particular people, far-flung, widespread among the peoples in all the colonies of your realm. Their customs differ from those of all peoples, and they do not abide by his majesty’s bylaws; his majesty has nothing to gain by tolerating them.” Haman also points out that the Jews are wealthy and offers the King the lion’s share of the spoils.

The Jews have been looked at suspiciously, murderously before — in Egypt for example, where their prosperity, fertility, and potential of becoming a fifth column greatly worried the new Pharaoh. But even Pharaoh did not propose what Haman (and Hitler after him) proposed: send the same edict everywhere, “to devastate, slaughter, and annihilate all the Jews (Yehudim), from the youngest to the oldest, children, women, in a single day…with their booty to be despoiled.”

News.com.au - PATIENTS who pay $195 can jump the queues at hospital emergency departments when the nation's largest health fund opens its first standalone clinic today. Medibank is guaranteeing patients with minor injuries and illnesses will be treated within one hour at its first Rapid Care Clinic in Brisbane. ...Twenty thousand patients a month wait more than the clinically-recommended one hour to be treated in the clogged emergency departments in public hospitals.

Oh the joy of socialized medicine, it's funny how we're told that socialized medicine is the way to go and we can never, ever let go of it. Funny how most of us have embraced this notion no matter how much time we spend waiting in emergency rooms but here is a clinic opening up where you'll have to pay. You'd think that if socialized medicine were all that wonderful, successful and great that there would be no need for these clinics, none whatsoever, the owners are wasting their money; but as you can see below, no matter how bad it gets, some just won't get it.

There appears to be another chink in the armor of manmade global warming supporters as a top science journal has withdrawn a study on sea level rise tied to global warming, after finding mistakes that undermined the projections.

The study published last year in Nature Geoscience predicted sea levels would rise by between seven and 82 centimeters by the end of the century. That backed up the U.N.'s climate change group.

Now The Guardian reports the scientists involved in the study say there are two separate technical mistakes in their research that led them to realize, "we no longer have confidence in our projections."

And they're right about that. Admitting that crooks have corrupted and slid past the peer review process and denouncing those crooks would be the first step to restoring the good name of science but they are not willing to go that far. In fact, by continuing to dignify fraud with the label of science they increase the damage to real science.

In any case, peer review is a very weak defence against deliberate fraud. The fact that both British and American climate researchers hid their raw data for many years was a smoking gun that alerted skeptics to the fact that fraud was going on but there is no mention of that below.

Also missing below is any mention of any scientific fact. Why? Because there ARE no facts showing man-caused global warming -- merely guesses dressed up as "models"

News.com.au - GUNMEN with silencers have killed a family of eight in Baghdad, beheading some of their victims, amid a spate of deadly attacks less than two weeks before Iraq's general election. Eleven other people were killed in attacks, including three in a suicide car bombing in west Iraq, and a police commando was shot dead by a sniper in Baghdad.

News.com.au - A BOMB mounted on a bicycle has exploded in the southern Afghan town of Lashkar Gah, killing seven people, a provincial official says. "The blast killed seven civilians and injured another 14," the spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, Daud Ahmadi, told AFP.

Funny how they always say allah the most merciful, how allah sees everything and all that crap, but oddly enough when they're busy slaughtering and murdering there is either just no mercy on the part of allah or he's as blind as a bat.

Glenn Beck, a leading political talk show personality in the US who has been hammering the Obama administration and the "progressive" Democrats (and Republicans as well), gave the keynote address at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). He hits the progressive movement and denounces the insane spending that is threatening to destroy the US. It's worth the watch.

Daily Telegraph - THE State Government has told long-suffering commuters in Sydney's northwest they will have to wait 14 years and re-elect Labor twice if they want to get a train line. And a plan to deliver new express rail services to the Western Suburbs has no completion date at all. On top of this comes a new car registration levy that will force motorists to pay up to $30 a year more to partly fund the new pie-in-the-sky plans. The tax, to bring in $500 million over 10 years, will penalise those who do not own small cars with vehicles over 975kg costing between $5 and $30 a year more, depending on the car's weight, from July.

I was having a look at my car rego papers and from a total of $245, $193 of that is tax, only $52 of it is actually put towards registration. If these thieving vermin had a skerrick of honesty or integrity, they'd rename the car registration to car tax and be done with it because that's what it really is. So now the current leftist scumbag running this state further into the toilet is proposing more crap, to be paid for by us car owners.

Below are two real-estate advertisements. Would Gore invest in a seaside property if he thought the sea was going to rise and swamp him?

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND REAL ESTATE

This private, peaceful ocean side haven offers bright blue waters and long stretches of beach, and is home to notables like Al Gore, John Edwards, and others who relish seclusion and natural surroundings. This 1,300 acre 5 mile island does not offer hotels, shopping centers, and tourism. However if bird watching, quiet walks and sunbathing is your strong suit you may find life here appealing. There are only 441 homes, no condos, but it does offer proximity to activity rich Wilmington, NC. Enjoy the myriad architectural styles of neatly cared for properties if you can get onto the island. If this is your style, Figure 8 Island may be your place.

Figure Eight Island is one of the places in North Carolina that is home to many celebrity houses. Celebrities like John Edwards and former Vice President Al Gore own houses on this island. The island has beautiful views as it is located between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean. The entire island only has about 440 houses making it an ideal place for couples and individuals to relax. It is also home to many beautiful exotic animal species. If you are looking for a vacation house, check out the Figure Eight island real estate. Wrightsville beach real estate also offers many bargains and great houses.

I would normally cover this on my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog but as it seems to be part of a political war against the drug companies designed to shore up support for Obamacare, I am covering it here. It is a huge crock, as I will point out at the foot of the article below. Politicians faulting the super-cautious FDA on drug safety really is a laugh

A Senate report that revives concerns about a GlaxoSmithKline PLC diabetes drug's link to heart attacks is putting pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to make changes to its drug-safety program. People familiar with the situation say agency leaders held calls over the weekend to discuss how to address complaints from Sens. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who released a new report Saturday on the Glaxo drug, called Avandia.

The FDA is trying to assemble a timeline of what the FDA knew of risks associated with Avandia, these people say, and plans to call a meeting of an outside advisory committee in the next few months to look at recent information on the drug, which Glaxo reported as having global sales of £771 million ($1.2 billion) in 2009.

According to a two-year investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, Glaxo knew about data linking Avandia to elevated risk of cardiovascular events for several years, but played down the information and tried to suppress doctors who raised concerns. Starting in 1999, Glaxo executives complained to superiors about researchers who questioned Avandia's safety, the report says.

Glaxo rejected those conclusions. It said in a statement that the increased risk of heart attacks hasn't been proven and noted that the FDA "has ruled that Avandia remain available." The company says it never tried to suppress doctors' views but sought to correct what it considered misinformation.

Internal FDA reviews included in the Senate report show that in 2008, longtime FDA scientists David Graham and Kate Gelperin urged the FDA to get Avandia off the market. They analyzed data on side effects in dozens of Avandia studies, but their recommendations were rejected by FDA chiefs. The senators want to know why.

Avandia is still on the market, but it has a strong warning label about cardiac risks. Its sales dropped after a widely publicized study in May 2007 by the Cleveland Clinic's Steven Nissen that linked Avandia to a 43% greater risk for heart attack.

Data Sources: We searched MEDLINE, the GlaxoSmithKline clinical trials register, the US Food and Drug Administration Web site, and product information sheets for randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses published in English through May 2007.

Study Selection: Studies were selected for inclusion if they were randomized controlled trials of rosiglitazone for prevention or treatment of type 2 diabetes, had at least 12 months of follow-up, and monitored cardiovascular adverse events and provided numerical data on all adverse events. Four studies were included after detailed screening of 140 trials for cardiovascular events.

Conclusion: Among patients with impaired glucose tolerance or type 2 diabetes, rosiglitazone use for at least 12 months is associated with a significantly increased risk of myocardial infarction and heart failure, without a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular mortality.

In other words, a survey of the strongest data available showed that taking Avandia increased your risk of having a heart attack from 1.05% to 1.46%, an increase in risk of less than one half of one percent -- which is vanishingly trivial compared to the risks we take in most things we do. Given the large sample size, however, the result is statistically significant, if not significant in any other sense. If we were to reject such small risks as that we would have NO drugs on the market because all drugs have some adverse side-effects.

But here's the real kicker. Read the last clause in the abstract above. What it means in plain English is this: Although Avandia takers had a minutely greater risk of having heart attacks, the "extra" heart attacks DID NOT KILL THEM. Avandia takers were no more likely to die from a heart attack than anybody else! And THAT is the drug that is so evil that the Senate Democrats are making a huge fuss about it! It's just the usual search for evil in the world about them that IS Leftism.

Update

Grassley is a Republican but he was an easy target to get sucked into this affair as he has in the past made something of a career of exposing researchers who had failed to declare payments received from drug companies. His interest is clearly in the possibility of corruption rather than in the science.

Telegraph.co.uk - Sweden's reputation as a tolerant, liberal nation is being threatened by a steep rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes in the city of Malmo. ...In 2009, a chapel serving the city's 700-strong Jewish community was set ablaze. Jewish cemeteries were repeatedly desecrated, worshippers were abused on their way home from prayer, and "Hitler" was mockingly chanted in the streets by masked men.

...Malmo's Jews, however, do not just point the finger at bigoted Muslims and their fellow racists in the country's Neo-Nazi fringe. They also accuse Ilmar Reepalu, the Left-wing mayor who has been in power for 15 years, of failing to protect them. Mr Reepalu, who is blamed for lax policing, is at the centre of a growing controversy for saying that what the Jews perceive as naked anti-Semitism is in fact just a sad, but understandable consequence of Israeli policy in the Middle East.

Fox News - After a fierce gunfight, U.S. Marines seized a strongly defended compound that appears to have been a Taliban headquarters — complete with photos of fighters posing with their weapons, dozens of Taliban-issued ID cards and graduation diplomas from a training camp in Pakistan. Insurgents who had been using the field office just south of Marjah's town center abandoned it by the end of Friday's fighting, as Marines converged on them from all sides, escalating operations to break resistance in this Taliban stronghold in southern Helmand province. Marines from Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines fought their way south from the town center Friday after residents told them that several dozen insurgent fighters had regrouped in the area.

By German economist Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich, commenting from Australia

The announcement by US President Barack Obama this week to provide federal loans for new nuclear power stations signals a revival of this technology. This may have implications for Australia, too.

For the United States, the President’s push for a new generation of nuclear power plants did not come a day too early. There are about 100 nuclear plants operating in the United States. Yet, the last one was built more than 30 years ago. Originally constructed for operating periods of just over 40 years, most of the existing plants had already been approved for a total of 60 years. Experts have been discussing a further extension to 80 years.

However, at some stage such lifecycle extensions will reach a limit and, thus, the Americans urgently had to make a decision in principle whether to continue with nuclear power. Nuclear contributes about 19% to US electricity production. It’s a substantial amount of energy, and the Obama administration has apparently concluded that currently there is no viable, let alone a better, alternative than building a new generation of nuclear stations.

News.com.au - TWO top Bush-era lawyers who authorised waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics exercised "poor judgement" but should not be disbarred, an internal Justice Department review has shown. An initial investigation by the department's ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, found that Jay Bybee and John Yoo engaged in "professional misconduct", a finding that could have stripped them of their law licences. But the agency's top career lawyer overruled the recommendations and concluded instead that while the controversial memos were "flawed", the pair did not act recklessly or knowingly provide incorrect advice, and thus should not face state disbarment or criminal punishment.

Poof! There go your dreams of prosecuting those who really just wanted to keep worthless cockroaches like you safe. And another thing, if you really want to whine about human rights, how about whining at your empty-suit messiah hussein obama who has authorized the almost daily attacks by American drones, blowing your terrorist chums to pieces without lawyers, trials or the right to remain silent. That's gotta grate with you America-hating lot.

It was the night a young Lion roared but was seemingly silenced by the might of the public relations machine. A 19-year-old Lions service club volunteer who suggested the PM was "too stingy to buy a $2 scratchie ticket", was gagged within two hours of The Sunday Mail attempts to investigate her claims.

It all began with an email from the teenage fundraiser who was selling $2 footy doubles in the corporate dining area of last weekend's Indigenous All Stars game at Skilled Stadium. "We were going around the tables in the function room with most people buying tickets gladly to support the Lions Club," she said. "I then approached the table where the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was sitting. Not only was he too stingy to buy a ticket, he wouldn't even look me in the eye and completely ignored me. His was the only table that didn't buy any tickets. I am upset that he would treat a volunteer this way and was disinterested in supporting the Lions club."

News.com.au - ENVIRONMENT Minister Peter Garrett will keep his job but thousands of workers will be sacked after the abrupt scrapping of the disastrous $2.5 billion household insulation scheme yesterday. And Mr Garrett's own department admitted that as many as 80,000 homes across the country may have been left with insulation that does not comply with the official guidelines.

Unbelievable, the arrogance and callousness of dudd is astounding. I just hope the voters out there remember all this come election time because if they vote this clown back in, not only will we be paying more via his wretched global warming taxes, but plenty more will be out of a job.

Our Australian skeptic friend, Val Majkus, has sent me a link to a speech made yesterday by Australian nutjob, Penny Wong, who is the Aussie Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water. Wong somehow kept a straight face when she told the crowd: “Climate change [is] happening more quickly than we previously thought.”

Wong was addressing the first national forum on coasts and climate change in Adelaide and promulgating all the usual doomsaying myths for her dwindling band of climate cult followers that global temperatures are fast rising and sea levels, as a consequence, will rise by a meter this century.

Then, the self-serving climate minister showed no remorse for going on to smear tens of millions of concerned citizens that form the grassroots movement of climate skeptics by implying they are under the sway of the tobacco lobby! Wong will come to rue her ludicrous statements. Projecting herself as some kind of high priestess. She is, in fact, no more than another gray-suited peddler of snake oil patter.

Here in Britain the mainstream media has remembered what it means to do objective journalism. Sadly, the Aussie press hasn’t yet woken up to Wong’s wonky word spin–but they will. The days of her ilk are numbered. So I need only proffer a couple of simple facts to debunk Wong’s ‘catastrophic’ global warming myth. But the minister won’t want her audience to hear such basic truths:

First, as widely reported, Professor Phil Jones, one of the world’s key alarmist climate scientists, admitted to the BBC last week that there has been no statistically significant rise in global temps for 15 years.and;

Second, scientists from 50 research and operational agencies from 26 countries have proved that world sea levels have fallen for the past six years.

"We'll take Japan to court", says PM. This will have a major adverse impact in Japan. It will be seen as a loss of face. Japanese consumers are highly likely to stop buying farm products of Australian origin. Rudd should butt out of something that is none of his business. Once Australia is seen as a hostile nation by Japanese consumers, there will be no rebuilding of Australia's farm-products trade for a very long time. Japanese tourists are also important for Australian business and that could come to a grinding halt too

KEVIN Rudd has vowed to take Japan to the International Court of Justice if it doesn't agree by November to stop Antarctic whaling, but a behind-closed-doors deal could blow a big hole in his case before then. A proposed compromise in the International Whaling Commission that allowed Japan to continue so-called scientific whaling, on a more restricted basis, could wreck Australia's claim that the practice is illegal under international law.

Times Online - The list of people banned from Las Vegas is a litany of dishonour. But among the swindlers, fixers and mobsters — many of their mugshots displayed on the Nevada Gaming Commission’s website under the heading Excluded, Wanted & Denied — is a new and rather unlikely name: that of Barack H. Obama, of Washington. “I want to assure you that when he comes [here], I’ll do everything I can to give him the boot,” growled Oscar Goodman, the Mayor of Las Vegas, before Air Force One swooped down over Sin City’s infamous “Strip” for a presidential visit that was expected to last less than 24 hours.

Mr Goodman was not there to greet Mr Obama when he stepped on to the tarmac of McCarran International, having turned down an invitation from the White House. Nor was he expected to attend any of the President’s events — an astonishing rebuff by a lowly city mayor to a US leader.

Well, the msm still polishing obamas ass might think it's unbelievable that someone would rebuff their great Totus, but to the rest of us peasants, we're all a bit tired of the arrogant gasbag. I wouldn't be surprised if few people actually turned out if obama were to waffle along to some gathering, unless off course he allows the people to ask him a few questions. Maybe they'll turn up to throw eggs or tell him to leave their healthcare alone but I don't know about hundreds or thousands cheering and swooning at the sight of him.

If you read the whole article, you'll see that only hundreds of people lined up for 'free' tickets to see obama at a town hall meeting, try charging them to see Totus and let's see if even a hundred will turn up. The message is clear, they're so over you obama.

President Obama recently announced he would be diverting funds away from NASA's plans to return to the moon, but failed to mention what his plans for the future of NASA might look like.

According to NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, President Obama has asked NASA to "find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries," in a push to make the agency a tool of international diplomacy.

The Orlando Sentinel reports: In addition to the nations that most of you usually hear about when you think about the International Space Station, we now have expanded our efforts to reach out to non-traditional partners,” said Bolden, speaking to a lecture hall of young engineering students. Specifically, he talked about connecting with countries that do not have an established space program and helping them conduct science missions. He mentioned new opportunities with Indonesia, including an educational program that examines global climate change."

Canceling the Constellation program already threatens to put the U.S. behind countries like China and Russia. When did Kennedy's once undeterred vision of American space exploration transform into Obama's plan for an international science "welfare" program? When did NASA become a tool of diplomacy and an extended arm of the EPA?

I gather that all references to mixed race are these days regarded as taboo. So when Obama referred to himself as a "mutt", you could almost hear the gasps. But blacks themselves take it very seriously. Among blacks, a lighter-skinned black tends to be more prestigious and more complacent about his skin color. So a brown black cruises, if that makes any sense.

Whites, on the other hand, are less sensitive to such differences. For political correctness purposes, all noticeably pigmented people are "black" and, as such, a privileged class who may not be criticized. Why the least competent segment of society is treated as a a privileged class is a question that I had better not address here.

But I want to say that being of mixed race is in fact a matter of some significance. I myself am of mixed race: Mostly English but with plenty of Irish and a bit of Scots. And that stands me in good stead. The English in me means that when I am in England I am quite reserved and hence qualify as "a nice quiet chap" -- which is a term of praise in England.

But when I am in Scotland the Celt comes out in me and the emotional, sentimental attitudes of the Scots are ones that I am entirely comfortable with. And even when I am back home in Australia, I do sometimes play sentimental Scottish music (is there any other kind?), which I greatly enjoy.

And I also have blood kin who are even more mixed than I am. My vivacious cousin twice removed -- Michelle -- is half Han Chinese and half Anglo and I am mightily impressed by her good qualities. She is still as yet in High School but she will go far. Her blue-eyed father is a very knowledgeable academic and a former Assembly of God minister so that helps.

So mixed race can be a good thing. American blacks are right. White racists will hate me for saying that but you can't win 'em all.

The Celtic sentimentalist in me, however, gives me a liking for the blue eyes that characterize all my close blood kin. But the fact that my tall blue-eyed son has a firm relationship with a lady who is half Han Chinese and half English will most probably mean that I will not have blue-eyed grandchildren. My son did however meet his lady when she was studying rocket science (I kid you not) so she is pretty smart. He is a mathematician and the Chinese are pre-eminent in mathematics so I am very pleased by the intellectual potential of any grandchildren that I might have. As an academic myself, I hold intellectual achievement in high regard. Iris pigmentation is a trivial matter if other things are good.

Mind you, genetics can sometimes spring surprises. Someone I see often and admire greatly is an Italian man with the usual Italian black hair and dark eyes. Yet he has recently fathered a gorgeous daughter who has blue eyes and RED hair -- two colorations that are recessive genetically. But he does have a blue-eyed, red-haired Anglo wife so that helps.

To forestall cynical comments, I might mention that Vincenzo does have a blue-eyed sister and that his mother is a Northerner. And there is a lot of Germanic blood among Northern Italians. Germans have been invading Italy for over 2,000 years -- since the days of the Roman republic, in fact. No wonder that Italians find Germans very alarming to this day.

News.com.au - CHANNEL 9 commentators Eddie McGuire and Mick Molloy have come under fire over comments made about the men's ice skating. In their Winter Olympics wrap last night, the pair took aim at some of the costumes worn by the male competitors in the figure skating. As the pair discussed the men's figure skating, Molloy said: "They don't leave anything in the locker room these blokes do they", before a sniggering McGuire interjected, adding "they don't leave anything in the closet either do they."

Molloy was quick to jokily reprimand McGuire, warning him he could get into trouble. The network then cut to an image of a skater wearing a tuxedo-style costume, which Molloy described as something even singer Prince would not wear. The footage then showed a skater wearing a costume of overalls and a flannelette shirt with McGuire suggesting it was "a bit of broke back". Molloy agreed saying: "A bit of Brokeback Mountain exercises, you can't wear that."

Yes really, the fairies are most upset by all this. You'd think that they'd be happy now that they have their own gay day where all the assorted fairies can punce around, flash their asses, wave the fairy flag and generally carry on for themselves, but no, that's not enough, the sensitive babies can't even cop the odd joke. Oh and i'm expecting one of the angry fairies to come rushing in here to huff and poof at me any moment now.

The Australian - KEVIN Rudd vowed today to review solar panel standards amid concerns that up to 2000 homes fitted under a federal scheme were at risk of electrical fires. Speaking after embattled environment minister Peter Garrett revealed he is now considering an audit of solar panels, the Prime Minister said the safety of rooftop installations was the priority.

First kevvie and his bungling minions stuffed up the insulation rebate scheme, now we learn they stuffed up the solar panel scheme as well, shock-horror! I wonder if the big-government lefties who push this sort of thing have learned their lesson, they wanted to meddle and fiddle with everything, they wanted to insert themselves into people's homes and lives. Well, careful what you wish for morons, you just got it, in all its glory.

I was thinking about this last night and it occurred to me, these schemes have shown the Australian public the truth about the rudd government, in a way the Australian media would never have shown him. Especially now that he's openly paid them to spit-polish his ass to a fine shine during an election year.

But there is a lesson in this for all sides of the political spectrum.

The Australian - CLIMATE change threatens to reshape the face of Bondi Beach, Bells Beach and the Sunshine Coast unless "large and expensive nourishment programs" are implemented, Penny Wong warned today. ...In the address to the National Coastal Climate Change Forum in Adelaide this morning, Ms Wong said it was “possible that with climate change, and without large and expensive nourishment programs Bondi Beach, Sunshine Coast and Bells Beach may no longer be the beaches we know today.”

Oh right, so Bondi is going eh, the seas are coming beach bums, really, pack your shit, head for the hills beach bums, so goes the cry of minister wong. Well, I just had a look at the growth rate of houses in Bondi, 35% in the last 3 years. And we've been told for years that the seas would rise and swallow us all. Sorry minister wong, the people are merrily buying away down there in Bondi and with every year of growth, the clearer the message is, you're pushing a crock of shit minister.

News.com.au - A SYDNEY schoolboy who allegedly brought a kitchen knife from home and threatened three fellow students was most likely being bullied, police say. But the 14-year-old's behaviour cannot be excused, Superintendent Peter Marcon warned, and the boy has been charged with criminal offences and barred from setting foot on school grounds. ...He understood that bullying may have been an element to the boy's actions but lamented that the boy should have informed his parents and the school instead of arming himself. "Because you're being bullied, because you're being teased - violence is not the answer, communication is,'' Supt Marcon said.

You go and ask any authority in the department of education at any level of government, from the lowest pustule to the big-cheese pustule and they'll tell you with a straight face and in grim tones that bullying is unacceptable, that there is zero tolerance of bullying, that schools have strict guidelines and rules coming out of their backside about dealing with bullying. Yet for some strange reason, we still have bullying.

Comments are enabled on all my blogs so almost every day I get a comment from a Leftist on one or another of them. I often think I should pass them for publication just to show what the Leftist minds out there are like but anger and abuse are so uninteresting that I always just delete them. Anger and abuse seems to be the limit of the talents of Leftist commenters.

The abuse can be amusing at times though. I am, for instance, often accused of being a Christian bigot. Seeing that I am an atheist, the lack of insight in such comments is remarkable.

Sometimes I am told that I am just an old man who cannot keep up with the modern world and resist change for that reason. I am now 66 but have been a conservative since my early teens so that is a bad guess too.

And it is amazing the number of organizations that I am "in the pay" of. That I am just a retired academic sitting in front of my computer in an upstairs room in a backstreet of a city that most people have never heard of doesn't seem to be envisaged. The last organization I was "in the pay" of was the University of New South Wales in Sydney in 1983, at which time I retired from academic employment. After that I just developed my business interests -- with a degree of success that would enrage leftists even more if they knew about it.

And, of course, the antisemites are often out, accusing me of being a dupe of the Jews etc. Since I have written at great length about Jews -- not all of it complimentary (See the sidebar of DISSECTING LEFTISM) -- and also about the history, psychology and sociology of antisemitism, I think I am at least not a "dupe". I read the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" in my teens and even then thought they were rather bizarre. Yet "The Protocols" are the Bible of antisemites (hugely popular in the Middle East) and I am often told that I should read them.

And so it goes. What I have listed is just a tiny sample of the hate-filled comments that I receive. Hate is really what the Left is about. Other conservative bloggers also occasionally mention the unreasoning hate they get from Leftists. Michelle Malkin seems to get it in spades.

That people who are so brimming over with hate are always alert to find something in conservatives that they can characterize as hate is, I suppose, understandable. It deflects attention from what they are.

The article below is very limited. The authors rightly say that basic concepts of right and wrong have often previously been shown to be largely hardwired (inborn). They also rightly see that religion reinforces and refines moral and ethical ideas but does not cause them. So the authors only achieve a negative: They exclude morality and a need for co-operation as a reason for religious beliefs. The only positive conclusion they have to offer is the very vague statement that religion is a "byproduct of pre-existing cognitive functions". That tells us precisely nothing, it seems to me. So let me answer the question. I don't think it is hard at all. I would say that religious beliefs are a product of a very basic and distinctive human trait: A hunger to understand -- in particular, a hunger to understand the world about us. And supernatural beliefs answer questions that otherwise lack answers. Is that clearer than a "byproduct of pre-existing cognitive functions"?

Religion evolved as a byproduct of pre-existing mental capacities, and not because it fulfilled a specific function of its own -- though it can facilitate co-operation in society, a study concludes. The new study, published Feb. 8 in the research journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, takes a somewhat different track, exploring the link between morality and religion.

Some scholars claim that religion evolved as an adaptation to solve the problem of co-operation among genetically unrelated individuals, while others propose that religion emerged as a byproduct of pre-existing cognitive capacities," said study co-author Ilkka Pyysiainen of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in Finland.

Pyysiainen and a co-author, evolutionary psychologist Marc Hauser of Harvard University, reviewed the two competing theories using the principles of what they call experimental moral psychology. "Religion is linked to morality in different ways," said Hauser. "For some, there is no morality without religion, while others see religion as merely one way of expressing one's moral intuitions."

But past studies, the authors said, show that people of differing religion or no religion show similar moral judgments when asked to comment on unfamiliar moral dilemmas. That suggests intuitive judgments of right and wrong work independently of explicit religious commitments, the researchers argued. "This supports the theory that religion did not originally emerge as a biological adaptation for co-operation, but evolved as a separate byproduct of pre-existing cognitive functions that evolved from non-religious functions," said Pyysiainen.

"However, although it appears as if co-operation is made possible by mental mechanisms that are not specific to religion, religion can play a role in facilitating and stabilizing cooperation between groups." This might help to explain the complex association between morality and religion, the scientists added. "It seems that in many cultures religious concepts and beliefs have become the standard way of conceptual moral intuitions. Although, as we discuss in our paper, this link is not a necessary one, many people have become so accustomed to using it, that criticism targeted at religion is experienced as a fundamental threat to our moral existence," said Hauser.

Considerable debate has surrounded the question of the origins and evolution of religion. One proposal views religion as an adaptation for co-operation, whereas an alternative proposal views religion as a by-product of evolved, non-religious, cognitive functions. We critically evaluate each approach, explore the link between religion and morality in particular, and argue that recent empirical work in moral psychology provides stronger support for the by-product approach. Specifically, despite differences in religious background, individuals show no difference in the pattern of their moral judgments for unfamiliar moral scenarios. These findings suggest that religion evolved from pre-existing cognitive functions, but that it may then have been subject to selection, creating an adaptively designed system for solving the problem of cooperation.

Wiwo...wiwo...wiwo. The sound floats on the winds of Ka Le, this southernmost tip of Hawaii's Big Island, where Polynesian colonists first landed some 1,500 years ago. Some say that Ka Le is haunted -- and it is. But it's haunted not by Hawaii's legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are "Na leo o Kamaoa"-- the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm.

The voices of Kamaoa cry out their warning as a new batch of colonists, having looted the taxpayers of Spain, Portugal, and Greece, seeks to expand upon their multi-billion-dollar foothold half a world away on the shores of the distant Potomac River. European wind developers are fleeing the EU's expiring wind subsidies, shuttering factories, laying off workers, and leaving billions of Euros of sovereign debt and a continent-wide financial crisis in their wake. But their game is not over. Already they are tapping a new vein of lucre from the taxpayers and ratepayers of the United States.

The Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade Bill appears to be politically dead since Republican Scott Brown's paradigm-shattering Massachusetts Senate victory. But alternative proposals being floated by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and others still promise billions of dollars to wind developers and commit the United States to generate as much as 20% of its electricity from so-called "renewable" sources.

The ghosts of Kamaoa are not alone in warning us. Five other abandoned wind sites dot the Hawaiian Isles -- but it is in California where the impact of past mandates and subsidies is felt most strongly. Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California "big three" locations -- Altamont Pass, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio -- considered among the world's best wind sites.

A Latin motto is dignified and a mark of interest in scholarship but U. Syd would rather be "modern". They claim to be aiming at making themselves stand out but in fact have just joined the common herd. It is a long time since I graduated from U. Syd but if I were a recent graduate I might well feel that my degree had been devalued -- that I had graduated from an ordinary university rather than a distinguished one. But I guess that the Left who dominate academe these days despise all traditions -- even a tradition of high scholarship. Perhaps they suspect -- probably rightly -- that they are not up to the standard of their predecessors

After 150 years the University of Sydney has abandoned its status quo, dropping the Latin motto from its redesigned coat of arms and logo. Students and scholars have turned to the new technology of social networking to launch a campaign calling for the reinstatement of the Latin inscription.

The university spent almost $750,000 on the research and redesign that axed the motto: "sidere mens eadem mutato" - a reference to Sydney following the traditions of universities in the northern hemisphere. A further $500,000 was spent replacing marketing material such as banners and street signage, the university said.

Fox News - ConocoPhillips, BP America and Caterpillar pulled out of a leading alliance of businesses and environmental groups pushing for climate change legislation on Tuesday, citing complaints that the bills under consideration are unfair to American industry. The sudden pullout of three corporate giants from a leading alliance of businesses and environmental groups could be the death knell for climate change legislation languishing on Capitol Hill.

Off course it's the death knell of this warmist bullshit, it was always doomed, seeing that it was based on mostly fantasy, fudged data and outright lies. Thanks to a few good people around the world who were brave enough to speak out despite the shameful and bastard-like treatment they received from the hateful warmists, many of us will be spared vast new taxes and curbs on our way of life.

It's only a matter of time before Joe Public out there is fully awake to the crap he's been fed and then it'll start becoming an election issue. It is only then that our politicians will start to give a damn, and only because their worthless asses are on the line, not because they care about us. I suppose I could say rest in peace global whatever-it-is-they're-calling-it-now, but given what the warmists were angling to impose on us, I say, @#$& you, die slow!

On a side note, apologies for my recent absence, I've been rather tied up with personal matters in the last week. Been trying to secure my own piece of Australia you see, but so far it's not happening so I think I'll just cool my heels for a while. However on a brighter note, old MK here is going to be an old man soon, yep, you read right, the Good Lord has blessed us with the most precious of gifts, I know, what was he thinking! :)

We have been told ad nauseam by the alarmists that global warming will kill all the coral reefs so I wonder how we account for the story below? Could warming be GOOD for coral? Seeing coral is most abundant in the tropics, it takes a Greenie to get the wrong answer to that

The polar snap enveloping much of the United States in record cold has been killing off coral reefs and causing iguanas to drop out of trees in the normally balmy warm waters off the Florida Keys, experts said today. The unusually chilly weather so far this year has seen sea temperatures plummet in southern Florida - a fatal development for the coral, which dies when exposed for an extended time to temperatures below 15 degrees Celsius. Especially in the lower Keys, "temperatures have been lower ... there is higher mortality", Diego Lirman, a University of Miami expert on coral, said.

Florida's usually mild and sunny winter weather has given way to record low temperatures during the historic cold snap in recent weeks. In Miami, the thermometer in January and February regularly dropped below 1.6 Celsius, the coldest temperatures since 1970. The cold snap also has led to "bleaching", in which the coral loses pigmentation and ultimately dies. [Hey! Alarmists like Hoagy claim that bleaching is caused by WARMING. And Hoagy is an "expert"]

Destruction of coral having a negative effect on delicate tropical ecosystems in the region, Mr Lirman said, with micro-algae living within the coral forced to leave their habitat for lack of a food source. Some of the worst affected species are the large brain and star coral, which can take several hundreds of years to grow into the vibrant underwater colonies. "The Keys have not seen a cold-water bleaching event like this since the winter of 1977-78, when acres of staghorn coral perished," said Billy Causey, southeast regional director of NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

Florida's coral reefs are considered a unique natural heritage area in the United States for their proximity to the coast and their expansiveness, running from north of Miami in the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

The state's myriad of tropical animals also have been impacted by the cold snap so far this year, with iguanas dropping from trees and manatees huddling around waters warmed by power plants. The cold-blooded iguanas' comfort level begins at 73 degrees Fahrenheit (23 Celsius) and they positively thrive at 95 degree Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius). But when temperatures drop below about 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius), they become immobile, and below about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (five degrees Celsius), they become completely immobile due to a lack of blood flow.

Unable to hold on, the helpless mohawked lizards that shelter in tree branches have been seen falling to the ground, and wildlife officials have offered guidelines to revive them.

This generation of pampered westerners is the first tribe in the history of the world that seems determined to destroy its ability to produce food.

The history of the human race has always been a battle for protein in the face of the continual challenge of natural climate change. Nothing has changed for this generation, except the wildfire spread of a destructive new religion that requires the sacrifice of food producers on a global warming altar.

Eons ago, long before ancient humans learned to use the magic warmth locked in coal, millions of woolly mammoths were snap frozen in the icy wastes of Siberia. They are still being dug out of the ice today.

In the last few weeks, in a mild repeat of this past climate disaster, massive snowstorms have killed millions of domestic animals in Mongolia and China. The capacity to produce and distribute food has been decimated across the top of the world from Northern Europe and Russia to North America. When orange groves in Florida are damaged and Texas gets six snowstorms in a few weeks it is obvious that nature is damaging the world food supply.

Solar energy produces all of our food. Those who follow the sun are already recording a dramatic change in sunspots, which tend to reflect solar energy. This seems to indicate that the current frigid conditions affecting the Northern Hemisphere may not be an isolated weather event but may be a harbinger of natural climate change.

Global warming has never been a problem for mankind. But global cooling is a killer.

However green extremists, supported by foolish politicians, are gnawing at the foundations of Australia’s food chain. And the biggest threat today is Climate Change Policies.

Land is an essential ingredient to most food production. All over Australia, uncontrolled regrowth of eucalypt scrub is silently reclaiming our vast grazing lands, the source of the lowest cost beef and mutton in the world. Generations of graziers have created and maintain these grasslands against the ever present threat of capture by woody weeds. Now their hands are tied and their land is being stolen by global warming politics. The suffocating scrub will soon pass the tipping point, beyond which grasslands are destroyed and the land is no longer capable of food production.

Land sterilisation is also occurring via the stealth of Wild Rivers, World Heritage and other lock-away-land policies.

Even more food producing land is lost by policies that subsidise people to grow carbon forests in the stupid belief that this will somehow improve the climate by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Trees, grasses, sub-soil critters, grazing animals and carnivores are all part of the same carbon cycle. If one life form gets to monopolise land and carbon resources, it is detrimental to other life.

Still more stupid are market destroying policies that use government mandates and subsidies to convert food producing land to growing ethanol for cars. This has already caused massive dislocations to markets for corn, sugar, soybeans and palm oils. Forcing people to convert food into motor fuel is not a sensible policy and always adds to food shortages.

Carbon dioxide is the breath of life for all food production. Imagine the stupidity of trying to capture this harmless will-o-the-wisp in order to bury it in carbon cemeteries. Luckily for our food capacity, this suicidal policy of carbon capture and burial is unlikely to succeed.

Finally, let’s look at water, the life blood of all food production. Australia probably has access to more water per head of population than most countries in the world. However, decades of government mis-management have made us more vulnerable to every drought. Many government policies have encouraged the waste of water resources.

There are huge unused water resources across the north from the Fitzroy River in the West to the Flinders River in Cape York. Most of this water is untapped and unused because of government anti-development and land sterilisation policies.

In the south, other silly government policies have supplied water for “free” to the cities. Anything free is wasted. Because of urban demand, food producers are now being denied water at any price, but there is no real price rationing in the cities.

When natural climate change in the Northern Hemisphere is combined with political climate change in our southern food baskets, the real crisis creeping up on the world is not global warming caused by industry, but global famine caused by politicians. As Genghis Khan said wisely “Only a foolish horse fights with his feed bag”.

About

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists. The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Some brief observations about Leftism

As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His excellent short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in a MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

You can email me (John Ray) here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)